Idina Menzel

Idina Menzel (born May 30, 1971, New York City, New York, U.S.) is an American actor and singer whose three-octave mezzo-soprano voice has made her a star of stage and screen in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. She is best known for her roles as Maureen in the Broadway musical Rent (1996); Elphaba in the Broadway musical Wicked (2003); and as Elsa in the Frozen movies (Frozen [2013] and Frozen II [2019]).

Early life

Menzel was born the daughter of Helene Mentzel (née Goldberg), a therapist, and Stuart Mentzel, a pajama salesman. She discovered her love of music at an early age. Her first experience singing in front of an audience was at age six while vacationing with her family in the Catskills. She grew up primarily on Long Islandin Syosset, New York. After her parents divorced when she was a teenager, she began to sing at weddings, parties, and bar and bat mitzvahs to earn extra money for school. Menzel changed the spelling of her surname to make it easier for people to pronounce as she embarked upon a singing career. She attended the prestigious New York University Tisch School of the Arts, graduating in 1992 (B.F.A., drama).

Broadway and theater

Wicked

Although already an accomplished performer, Menzel’s fame soared in 2003 when she was cast as Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, in the international smash-hit musical Wicked, directed by Joe Mantello with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and based on Gregory Maguire’s novel  Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (1995). The musical tells the story of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) from the misunderstood Elphaba’s perspective, detailing her long friendship with Glinda the Good. Menzel originated the role alongside Kristin Chenoweth’s Glinda. Menzel’s soaring mezzo-soprano fills their duet on the show’s signature song, “Defying Gravity.” Menzel continued in the role until early 2005, and the following year she took it to London for her West End debut at the Apollo Victoria Theatre. Menzel’s performance in the original Broadway production earned her the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical in 2004.

Frozen and other film performances

Menzel has experienced great success on-screen, particularly in animated films featuring her vocal talents. Her most famous role is providing the voice of Queen Elsa in the Disney movies Frozen and Frozen II, Disney’s interpretation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Snow Queen. As of 2025, the two films are among the highest-grossing animated movies of all time. She starred alongside Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Jonathan Groff, among others, in the charming story of Elsa’s quest to master the powers that plunged her kingdom into permanent winter and, in the sequel, to find the source of her snow-making powers.

Menzel sang the song “Let It Go” in the first Frozen film, and it became an international hit, reaching number 5 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart and winning both the Oscar for best original song (2014) and the Grammy for best song written for visual media (2014). The popularity of “Let it Go” made her the first person to have both a top 10 hit and a Tony Award for acting. Her voice work on the track is memorable for the staggeringly high note she belts out and holds on the word “on” before Elsa defiantly slams the door of her ice castle and declares “the cold never bothered me anyway.” She performed the song at the Academy Awards ceremony in 2014, and also performed Frozen II’s “Into the Unknown” at the Academy Awards show in 2020. She has also voiced Elsa in a number of spin-off films.

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.In 2007 Menzel appeared in Enchanted, as Nancy Tremaine and reprised the role in its sequel, Disenchanted, in 2022. She starred in the 2019 film Uncut Gems, playing opposite Adam Sandler. She supported Camila Cabello’s performance in the titular role of Amazon’s Cinderella in 2021. Menzel also appeared in 12 episodes of the hit TV show Glee (2009–15), playing Shelby Corcoran, the coach of a rival glee club.

The year 2022 was a busy one for Menzel’s film career. She released Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?, a retrospective of her career from her Broadway beginnings through her concert at Madison Square Garden in 2022. The same year she was awarded with a Disney Legend Award for her contributions to Disney. Also in 2022 she cohosted, with comedians Moshe Kasher and Ilana Glazer, the YouTube documentary Recipe for Change: Standing up to Antisemitism, which won a 2023 Daytime Emmy Award for outstanding daytime special. Continuing her cinematic run and exploration of Jewish themes, in 2023 she again acted opposite Adam Sandler in the film You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah.

Other activities and personal life

Menzel has released numerous albums, including soundtracks, live concert recordings, solo efforts, and holiday albums. In 2015 she sang the The Star-Spangled Banner at Super Bowl XLIX. In 2022 president Joe Biden awarded her the National Medal of Arts in coordination with the National Endowment for the Arts . Her dance album, Drama Queen, was released in 2023. She has performed at venues all over the world, including Royal Albert Hall, Carnegie Hall, and Radio City Music Hall.

Menzel married actor Taye Diggs in 2003. The two had met during the run of Rent, and they had one child together. In 2010 the couple founded A BroaderWay, which provides programming to introduce young people to the arts. Menzel and Diggs divorced in 2014, and she married actor Aaron Lohr in 2017.

With her sister, Cara Mentzel, she has cowritten two inspirational books for children, Loud Mouse (2022) and Proud Mouse (2023). Both books are semi-autobiographical: Loud Mouse tells the story of Dee, a mouse who loves to sing loudly; Proud Mouse is about Dee’s sister Cara Lee, who learns to navigate school in the shadow of her older sister.